Galderma exec: Skip the market research (sometimes)

TBWA/WorldHealth worked with Galderma to get rid of the traditional process in which an agency and its client interact in effort to improve the work and make it more efficient and cost-effective.

The result was an award-winning campaign that boosted sales and compared dermatologists to great artists. But to get there Galderma and TBWA/WorldHealth both had to change the work they work.

“We have to be accountable for our part of the dysfunction that's happening,” said Robin Shapiro, group president of North America for TBWA/WorldHealth. “The agency blames the client. The client blames the agency, and because of that nothing changes.”

When Galderma acquired Valeant's portfolio of aesthetic fillers, the marketing team gave TBWA/WorldHealth (then Corbett) six months to come up with a global relaunch of its six brands.

As the portfolio's professional agency, TBWA\WorldHealth decided to focus on four issues in the workflow. The agency would instead work quickly, search outside the agency for creative talent, work in sketches, and let creatives skip the meetings. The agency flew in creative directors from South Korea, Mexico, and other regions for a five-day immersive to focus on the creative.

Galderma, for its part, worked to get executives to sign off on the creative during a single meeting and encouraged the agency creatives to try out its filler products to better understand the experience of receiving one, according to Alisa Lask, VP of U.S. marketing of aesthetic and corrective for Galderma Laboratories.

The drugmaker also used pitch work created by FCB Health, which was awarded its consumer business. To get the campaign moving, the creative relied on stock photography and skipped the market research.